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Turn off "auto-hide menus" in Office

  • Artículo

This is one of those features that a lot of people love to hate, where you have to wait a few seconds or go to the little chevron on the bottom of the menu to expand it:

It doesn't bug me too much - except when it hides the MRU (most recently used) list in any Office application, which drives me batty. It makes sense on some levels - if you remember the Tools menu in Outlook 97, it was a scary long list of many many options, intimidating to many users. So hiding things that aren't frequently used is one way to help that (of course, another way is just smarter menu usage in general, and Outlook 98 did have a much cleaner look than 97).

If you don't like this feature, you can turn it off:

1. Right click on a toolbar in any office app and choose Customize
2. On the Options tab, check “Always show full menus”
3. Click Close

This is a global setting, so turning it off in one app turns it off for all Office apps.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 06, 2004
    I may be in the minority on this, but I actually like the chevrons. I noticed that it doesn't happen to my Start menu (in XP) anymore. It used to happen in Win2k, and now I can't find the option for the life of me to [re]enable it in XP.
  • Anonymous
    August 06, 2004
    Agreed. How did that feature get past usability testing. Example, use the "Draw" menu in Word and click on "Group". Group gets added to your frequently used menu options - but "Ungroup" doesn't.
    And then trying to turn it off - why Tools/Customize/Options rather than Tools/Options?
  • Anonymous
    August 06, 2004
    Personally I hate them. Just adds another step when I am speed scanning :)

    So I turn them off.
  • Anonymous
    August 06, 2004
    I wonder if long, intimidating menus were really the reason. Because hiding some items, based on a guess of how often a user might want to use them is probably the worst solution to the problem. How about re-organizing the menus so they're not confusing?
  • Anonymous
    August 06, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 06, 2004
    A companion "trick" is to use the "save my settings" wizard that is part of the Office 2003 tools. I'm a "auto-hide menu" hater, and every time I would re-format or re-install Office I would have to remember where all of those silly switches were! Now I just run the wizard. Saves me probably hours for each time I fool around enough to have to re-install Office
  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2004
    If nobody is happy when their menus change with an upgrade how exactly are they going to accept that their menus change every time they use the product?
  • Anonymous
    August 09, 2004
    I believe that with this feature enabled, the menus will eventually reach a state where they are static and specific to the user.
  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2004
    The UI debate is one for usability experts to ponder over, I doubt any user will ever be happy with where things are or where they went. But there is a message here to Microsoft UI designers: stop helping me by trying to anticipate where I'm going--it's always wrong. This is the reason why I hate personalized menus, why Autocorrect drives me insane, hidden systray icons in XP, etc. There's an unavoidable Murphy's Law factor.

    --mr
  • Anonymous
    August 13, 2004
    The comment has been removed